Inside the Research Behind FIFA’s Biggest Pitch Challenge
With the 2026 FIFA World Cup approaching, FIFA Senior Pitch Management Manager Alan Ferguson explains the research, planning and pitch science behind the biggest World Cup ever staged.
When the 2026 edition of the FIFA World Cup was awarded to the USA, Mexico and Canada, Alan immediately knew FIFA’s pitch team would be entering new territory.
This would be the first World Cup hosted across three countries. It would be the first to feature 48 teams. It would include the biggest match schedule in tournament history, with 104 games played across 16 stadiums. Eight of those venues, located in the USA and Canada, are indoor stadiums more commonly associated with NFL games, concerts and major events than natural grass football pitches.
“Once the dust had settled and the scale of the challenge started to sink in, the first priorities formed very quickly,” Alan says. “It was clear from the outset that the research needed to be thorough, because this was not going to be a standard tournament delivery.”
With such a diverse footprint to facilitate and deliver, the initial research had to be extensive. Once any tournament is awarded, the early detective work begins. Stadium microclimates, weather conditions, logistics, pitch construction options and local growing environments all have to be understood. The challenge facing Alan and the team was that, for the biggest World Cup ever staged, there was simply much more to investigate than usual.
“We started more than six years out, and while that sounds like a long time, in reality it is not,” Alan explains. “When you are setting up the biggest World Cup tournament in history, that time gets used very quickly.”
Having identified that a research facility would be required, the next step was establishing where it should be located and who would host it. One of the success stories from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar had been the small research facility set up in Doha to examine some of the issues around building pitches in the desert. That facility proved highly valuable, helping to identify solutions that supported the build-up and delivery of the tournament pitches.
Turf education and research is a significant sector in the USA, with several leading universities delivering both research and degree-level courses. After speaking to a number of European and UK-based turf companies trying to break into North America at the time, Alan quickly established that the University of Tennessee and Michigan State University were two of the leading players in this field.
“I had heard both John Sorochan and Trey Rogers lecture at various turf conferences, and both were very well known and respected in global turf circles,” Alan says. “Their knowledge, their research background and their experience in North American sports turf made them obvious people to speak to.”
Alan’s first connection with Dr John Sorochan came during his time at the Football Association in England, through Sorochan’s role as field consultant for the NFL Players Association. Sorochan had travelled to London to assess the Wembley Stadium pitch ahead of the NFL International Series games played there in the autumn.
“With eight of the stadiums more used to hosting NFL games, there was a ready-made connection there,” Alan explains. “It allowed us to link the FIFA pitch team with people who understood those buildings, those surfaces and the wider US turf industry.”
On the Michigan State side, Dr Trey Rogers brought valuable tournament experience, having been one of the key consultants during the 1994 World Cup, the last time the tournament was staged in North America. At that time, one of Rogers’ young team members was John Sorochan. As the investigation progressed, the decision to work with both universities became increasingly obvious.
Alan also felt that, given the size of the tournament footprint and the number of intense microclimates involved, it would be better to work with two universities and two leading research teams. This would give the project the capacity to cover all the key topics within the time available.
Late in 2018, Alan met John Sorochan in an East End café in London. Over a cup of tea, the research project for the 2026 World Cup began.
“Looking back now, it turned out to be one of the best career decisions I have ever made,” Alan says. “The research facility has gone on to carry out more than 250 individual trials, covering everything from grow lighting to hybrid stitching.”
The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be the biggest and most complex tournament build and delivery ever undertaken by FIFA’s pitch team. It will break records, introduce new challenges and require solutions at a scale the sport has not seen before. Moving from the smallest World Cup footprint in Qatar in 2022 to the largest, across three host nations in 2026, has created challenges at both ends of the scale.
As the required research was being discussed, the 16 host cities and stadiums were selected. At that point, the scale of the task became even clearer.
“Once the host cities and stadiums were confirmed, the challenge became very real,” Alan says. “Unlike Qatar, where the footprint allowed for a much more consistent approach, this tournament was spread across three countries, with very different climates, venues and technical requirements.”
The pitch team would have to address altitude in Mexico, different weather patterns across the USA and Canada, and the need to develop turf plans for both cool-season and warm-season grasses. In effect, the team would need to produce 16 individual pitch delivery plans.
At its simplest, every grass plant needs light, air and water. But when eight of the proposed venues are indoor stadiums that had never sustained natural grass for an extended period, that simple principle became one of the defining challenges of the tournament.
To deliver the 104-match schedule, each stadium would stage an average of eight to nine games. Some of the stadiums had previously hosted exhibition matches as part of summer tours, where turf, or sod as it is referred to in the USA, had been overlaid onto synthetic surfaces or directly onto concrete floors.
Neither approach had worked well over an extended period. The pitches had very short lifespans, often only a matter of days, and had drawn criticism from players, particularly those from the UK and Europe.
For the World Cup, the minimum period that pitches will be required inside the indoor stadiums is seven to eight weeks.
All FIFA tournaments have a set of pitch requirements, and for the men’s World Cup those requirements are considerable, with the majority mandatory. Given the intensity of the match schedule, technologies such as vacuum systems, hybrid stitching and grow lighting have become increasingly necessary in tournament pitch design since the 2018 World Cup in Russia. This is where the need for detailed research became essential.
With the decision made to work with the University of Tennessee, in partnership with Michigan State University, a focus group was established. Made up of the FIFA team and lead professors from the universities, the group began meeting online every Friday from early 2023.
By this point, the FIFA office in Miami was open and the in-country pitch team was being established. Led by Ewen Hodge, who had previously led the Aspire Sports Turf team during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the team has grown to more than 10 people covering pitch-related activity across all three host countries. Those early meetings helped shape the research project and define the scope of the trial programme.
One of the first areas identified was grow lighting. Every stadium in the 2026 footprint has significant shade issues, with the eight indoor stadiums presenting the most complex challenges. The team decided that a specialised building would be required and, after several months, the FIFA Lighthouse building was erected at the research farm at the University of Tennessee.
The original hope had been to have a building on each university campus, but escalating post-Covid costs meant the project was restricted to one.
The research team worked with suppliers identified as capable of providing grow light solutions to the stadiums. Using the results of hemi-surveys, they were able to replicate stadium conditions inside the Lighthouse building. Over time, bespoke grow lighting solutions began to emerge for each venue.
“One of the first stadiums to complete its trials and go live was AT&T Stadium in Dallas,” Alan says. “When the suspended grow light system was activated, it really did take your breath away. It showed, for the first time, the real value of the programme.”
By now, the research programme was in full swing and the added challenge of the FIFA Club World Cup was being discussed. It is usual for FIFA to stage a test tournament ahead of a World Cup. Previously, that role had been performed by the Confederations Cup, but a new tournament was now being proposed.
The idea was to host a full club tournament made up of 32 teams from the six confederations, staged in the USA across 12 stadiums in 2025.
“As daunting as it was, the Club World Cup gave us a chance to test these technologies in a live environment,” Alan explains. “The build time was just under a year, but it gave us real-world conditions to work with before the main tournament.”
Another key area of research was how the individual pitch profiles would be installed into the indoor stadiums. This became one of the most detailed pieces of work carried out, as it had to accommodate automatic irrigation, vacuum systems and ventilation systems within the pitch construction.
